Magento Imagine 2016 – The Highlights

Magento Imagine 2016 came to an end a mere two weeks ago and it’s still fresh in our minds. The three-day extravaganza held at the Wynn in Las Vegas was full of exciting announcements, informative talks and of course parties. The Redbox team who attended came back with a wealth of new knowledge and memories. Hopefully by now, the hangovers are a distant memory. Here is a roundup of what went on at this year’s conference.

Magento Imagine Big Announcements

They keynote speeches are always a highlight at Magento. This is where amazing case studies are presented and we find out what’s new from the number one omnichannel ecommerce platform.

2015 was the year of Magento 2, and the figures since its release are impressive:

228,000 downloads of Community and Enterprise Editions

Over 800 live sites worldwide (including Redbox)

100+ Magento 2 trained partners (including Redbox)

Magento Enterprise Edition 2.1

Magento 2.1 Announcement at Imagine 2016

The next release of Magento 2, Enterprise and Community Edition 2.1, was announced. Expected to release in June, the upgrade will feature enhanced functionality and capabilities such as staging and preview, Elasticsearch and payment features. Also announced in Q3 is the Magento Enterprise B2B module which should be a bonus for developers working on those projects.

Magento Marketplace Launch

The launch of Magento Marketplace offers digital store managers resources for applications and services that enable the expansion of their Magento solutions. Retailers can easily discover relevant products to enhance their online stores from trusted and hand selected Magento partners.

Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition Launch

The biggest announcement of the entire event was certainly the launch of Magento Enterprise Cloud Edition. The PaaS environment enables faster deployment of scalable omnichannel websites with the best fully redundant hosting and managed services infrastructure, AWS.

Fraport – The Biggest Omnichannel Project Yet

Undoubtedly, the Fraport ecommerce project by Frankfurt Airport and German agency AOE was the most impressive presentation of the conference. With over 300 retail stores throughout the airport and 61 million passengers travelling through the airport each year, the creation of the Fraport platform gives passengers the opportunity to shop their items from any store and any terminal before flying, while flying and at the airport with 30 minute delivery to any location within the airport.

Redbox at Imagine

Team members from London, Dubai and New Zealand flew a cumulative 120 hours to attended this year’s conference. There is no doubt that everyone took advantage of what Imagine had to offer from the many talks and meet ups to the parties.

Chris doesn’t hesitate to represent Redbox in the front row at the Pre-Imagine event

The Awards

Certainly the main highlights for Redbox were the reception of two amazing awards. On the second day of the conference, during the Excellence Awards, Screwfix and Redbox were announced as the winners of the Great Explorer Award for International Expansion. A great achievement for both parties after months of collaboration on the expansion of their B2B website into new European markets.

Magento announces Screwfix and Redbox as winners of the Great Explorer Award for International Expansion

On the last day, during the Partner Summit, Redbox was awarded the 2016 Digital Commerce Partner of Year Award. CEO Jonty Sutton was proud of his team for the hard work put into all the projects, which resulted in the receipt of this recognition.

“The whole team is truly humbled to receive this recognition from Magento. Having been awarded the ‘Partner of Excellence’ award for the last two years running, now to receive the top partner award, we couldn’t be prouder. It’s a testament to the incredible work our team around the globe delivers and confirmation of the trust and respect our clients have in our organisation and the value we add to their businesses day in and day out. Being recognised as a whole team with this award, as well as for our specific work with our client Screwfix, is a great achievement – one we will look to build on in 2016 as we further embrace the outstanding new products and services being brought to the table by Magento in the Enterprise space.”

Craig, Chris and Jonty accept the Digital Commerce partner of the Year award

If you want to get a better idea of what the conference had to offer, here is a video:

Thank you Magento, see you again next year…

Next year’s Magento Imagine conference dates have already been announced. The Magento mecca will take place again at the Wynn from 3-5 April 2017, look forward to doing it all again next year!

Founded in 2004, Redbox Digital is an internationally trusted ecommerce agency with a reputation for providing end-to-end digital and omnichannel commerce solutions for major brands across the globe, in both the B2C and B2B sectors.

With offices in London, Modena, Dubai, Mauritius, Sydney and Auckland, we provide global capacity with local thinking. We’re also the leading Magento Global Elite Partner in the Middle East, supporting businesses in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.